Jared Diamond (2005), in his book,
“Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail
or Succeed,” defines landscape amnesia as
one of the primary mechanisms for the
decline and ultimate collapse of societies.
This phenomenon occurs when people
lose knowledge of how the natural world
once was, with each succeeding generation
accepting a degraded environment as the
status quo. Carried to its end, a society
remains unconcerned until it reaches the
point of no return.